Hi folks- Bill Schmoker checking in here from the American Birding Association’s Camp Colorado at the YMCA of the Rockies in beautiful Estes Park, right on the border of Rocky Mountain National Park. I can see the 14,259-foot summit of Long’s Peak out my dorm window and have 21 eager and talented middle- & high-school kids in the adjoining rooms resting up after a fantastic first day of camp.
More and more I find myself looking for opportunities to shoot video of birds along with stills. With HD video recording capability now widely featured in DSLRs and high-quality cell phones it has become easier than ever for birders to grab really neat movies of their avian subjects doing cool things. On my annual sojourn to northwest Wisconsin this past June I had a cooperative Yellow-bellied Sapsucker whose favorite drumming post was right outside my cabin. I took advantage of the opportunity to film the bird both with my DSLR rig and through my Leica APO-Televid 65mm spotting scope. Below I’ll summarize a few considerations for both rigs and present short movies taken with each setup for your perusal and comparison.
As I sit here and a red-eyed vireo drones on in the boiling heat, it comes to me that even more than the couple of hundred birds Ursula has pegged down for me, she and I have been able to reach even more people with messages of bird conservation and ethic that go far beyond field of view and magnification. Here’s the rundown.
As of July 6th, 2014 Athena had added stops to pick Bicknell’s Thrush in New Hampshire, swung through Maine to see Atlantic Puffins, Black Guillemots, Razorbills, Arctic & Roseate Terns. Then headed south to add Mississippi Kites in Mississippi (appropriately enough)! All of these birds were seen with the great assistance of Leica Birding Team member, [...]
Leica Sport Optics and Princeton University Press have teamed up to give away five copies of the new Rare Birds of North America book. Read on to find out how you can enter!
Join Birding Team member Jennie Duberstein as she heads into the field with researchers from Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and Boise State University to tag Turkey and Black vultures in Arizona.
From patch birding to big years, join Mike Lanzone on his big year in Somerset County Pennsylvania!
Master of birding fieldcraft, Steve N.G. Howell, continues his “How to Use a Field Guide” series with this final installment on how to use weight (or mass) measurements effectively when thinking about the relative size of birds in the field.
In the world of hawk watching, the ability to pull distant shapes out of the sky and rapidly arrive at a correct identification for those shapes, is king. In fact, some people get pretty competitive about it; so when David La Puma from Leica Sport Optics suggested I try a pair of seven power Ultravid HDs (7×42 to be exact) I have to admit I was initially a little nervous. The more I thought about it the more that scene from The Untouchables came to mind, complete with flashes of Sean Connery muttering something about bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Athena has been a busy binocular, bouncing all over the country through spring migration. From San Diego, CA to the Rio Grande Valley, TX to Florida to Colorado (for spring chickens) to Arcata, CA to Corpus Christi, TX to the Shores of Lake Erie in Ohio and Wisconsin and Georgia… One of these trips was to [...]
Master of birding fieldcraft, Steve N.G. Howell, continues his “How to Use a Field Guide” series with this installment on how to use size effectively when identifying birds in the field.
In 2013 you followed the trials and tribulations of a pair of Leica Trinovid 8x42 binoculars passed from hand to hand across the Americas on a “big year” quest to see as many bird species as possible!
In 2014 we have a sleek 7x42 Ultravid HD binocular traveling the globe and soaking in many spectacular sights! Follow along with us vicariously here.
